Analyzing Cross-country E-entrepreneurship in a Framework of Transnational Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Evidence of Chinese E-platforms

Introduction

In digital economics, there is a universal acceptance of the significance of digital entrepreneurship (DE) to achieve socio-economic advancement by researchers, policymakers and society as a whole (Sahut et al., 2019). DE has advanced to a state where it has yielded itself to a completely new entity in the field of interdisciplinary entrepreneurship research (Nambisan 2017) studied through information systems (Du et al., 2018), economics (Richter et al., 2017), management, innovation (Nambisan, 2017), policy, education (Li et al., 2017a), strategy and sociology aspects in partnership with other entrepreneurship disciplines (Zaheer et al., 2019). Till now, varying definitions have been offered to DE, in the form of internet entrepreneurship (between 2000-2001), cyber entrepreneurship (Around, 2004), information and communication technologies (ICT) entrepreneurship (Bogdanowicz, 2015) and ICT associated entrepreneurship (Steininger, 2019). These definitions have been loosely utilized by scholars, and in certain situations, self-made definitions have been provided to get the message across to the target population. This paper defines DE as “the process of entrepreneurial creation of digital value through the use of various socio-technical digital enablers to support the effective acquisition, processing, distribution, and consumption of digital information (Sahut et al., 2019, p11)” or new venture opportunities presented by new media and internet technologies (Davidson et al., 2010, p2978).”

Although DE has garnered significant research interest, there has been only a handful of studies done which has focused on transnational DE (Melnikova et al., 2019) as well as small and medium enterprises (SMEs) working within the field (Afutu-Kotey et al., 2017). Researchers have placed considerable weightage on internet platforms, infrastructure and technology companies who have achieved commercial success but has neglected the everyday digital entrepreneurs from a DE point of view. What is striking is that majority of these frontline digital services and development firms are categorized as SMEs. Majority of the entrepreneurs who achieved personal value (Kotey, 1997) via DE, are in the capacity of SMEs and was driven to initiate such measure either due to resource-rich or resource-scarce.